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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

> Goodbye MBA mentality and back to Grovian execution and engineering centric culture.

> Intel made huge error when they decided to delay DUV -> EUV transition.

Just as an FYI, that error was made when the CEO was an engineer, not an MBA.

And I find it amusing for folks here to cheer Grovian culture. Andy Grove's management style had all of what people criticize Amazon's culture, on steroids. Indeed, I believe Jeff Bezos took some of the 14 leadership principles from Grove (who was CEO at that time).

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> And I find it amusing for folks here to cheer Grovian culture. Andy Grove's management style had all of what people criticize Amazon's culture, on steroids.

People tend to forgive a leader's flaws, including really terrible flaws, if the leader seems to be producing results that people like.

Also, the grass tends to be greener in the past.

Oh yeah, rose colored lenses

Strictly speaking those shouldn’t make the grass look greener.

> Just as an FYI, that error was made when the CEO was an engineer, not an MBA.

And not just any engineer, an engineer who specifically came from the fab side of things and not the chip design side of things.

Yeah, and I should mention that the idea to make the foundry a big part of Intel's business came from a past CEO who was an MBA (circa 2010-2011), and it was the engineers in the company who sabotaged that effort.

History showed the engineers to be wrong, and here we are with Intel trying to compete with TSMC for customers.

That TSMC has a good business being a pure foundry doesn't mean Intel will have a good business being a mixed foundry.

I imagine a failed process step (10nm) would have been an even worse disaster if they had external customers for it.

> Just as an FYI, that error was made when the CEO was an engineer, not an MBA.

Hm... no? Most of the EUV roadmap decisions were likely finalized c. 2009-2010 when they bet on double patterning for what would become the 14nm node. That was under Paul Otellini, who was an MBA who climbed the ladder in Intel via the sales and marketing organization.

The leadership principles are nonsensical because (no joke) they occur in pairs labelling extrema of various dimensions, the point being that _every_ activity can be described as lying on some point in 7-dimensional bullshit space, and that point can be either characterized as close to or far from some leadership principle.

I don't know how else to describe it, but it's just a justification system for a deep hierarchy to belittle the workers.

I say this having worked years in the inner engineering sanctum of Apple where none of this bullshit existed (both during and after the Steve Jobs era).

Not to defend Amazon's LP's, I learned early on their only utility was to weaponize them in arguments where you can retroactively think of ways to justify your position with them, but are they literally opposed pairs?

I don't disagree that they're often contradictory but I can't come up with directly opposed pairings.

(Not that it matters to your point, it's just bugging me to be spinning my wheels trying to come up with the pairs)

Where did Amazon go wrong and how did Apple do better?

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